https://liliputing.com/2018/04/facebook-may-be-designing-its-own-chips.htmlApple is said to be designing its own chips for use in upcoming Macs computers, which isn’t a huge surprise since the company already designs the chips its uses in iPhones and iPods. But there also seems to be a trend toward companies that typically source their chips from companies like Intel and Qualcomm turning to in-house designs.
Last year Xiaomi started making its own smartphone chips. Rumor has it that Amazon is developing its own chips for use in smart speakers. And now it Bloomberg reports that Facebook may be developing its own processors.
It’s unclear at this point what they’ll be used for: but there are a bunch of possibilities, including:
Servers
Virtual reality headsets (Facebook owns Oculus)
Smart speakers (Facebook is said to be working on a device to compete with Amazon Echo and Google Home-style speakers)OK, each major company (Apple, Google, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, Amazon, Facebook) seems to be designing themselves up a custom fitted ARM chip to specifically fit their specific needs. All are using the RISC based ARM DynamIQ system technology to do so.
NOBODY IS USING PURE INTEL CISC BASED TECHNOLOGY solely for any of it anymore. Even AMD is now using ARM DynamIQ tech as the roots of their "CISC similar" co-processing CPU and graphics chipsets. Now even Intel says they are going to be doing some of the same sort of thing later on this year, incorporating more of the tech that AMD uses. (And yes, this is legal -- Intel has a long standing ARM systems design license -- has had it for over 5 years now and AMD is certainly free to peddle their stuff to Intel if they want to)
Intel is the one losing the largest piece of this shifting chunk of market share, with Qualcomm being the second biggest chunk size loser.
We are looking for ARM to evolve more drastically this year and to change up DynamIQ in the direction of MORE GRUNT POWER per big core fairly soon.Two things drive this, First -- Apple, Samsung and Qualcomm are already using the current heaviest hitter A-75 big cores and will soon need something better -- real soon. They will need this later on this year or early next year, as a matter of fact. Apple is the hard driver pushing this hard -- asking ARM Holdings to come up with a PC class core designed at 7nm lithography as that is where they will be next year 100% as they are phasing into it on phones this year.
Because ARM will never announce anything new until it is in real production at one or more of their vendors, we find that we are currently sitting in the "silence zone" over these potential new cores all over again ......
Second item is all the major players that are signalling they are sick and tired of Wintel and tired of being gamed, screwed over and then bled dry all the time by Wintel.
Wintel needs to die, Intel needs to die. The age of Dinosaurs is over, boys and girls --- it is LONG past due for the Wintel boys to go retire to the tar pits .....
ARM Holdings needs to step up to the plate with a bigger bat PC class main core, something that can knock the ball slam out of the park -- not just be doing them fast bouncing grounders all the time as they have been doing.
You got Google cooking up an inherently secure, blazing fast, no-legacy-entanglements FOSS OS for ARM based processors that the stated intent is to cover phones, tablets, laptops, PC and Server Class machines. You got Apple laying in ARM based plans for dropping a new mystery chip into all their laptops and PCs. You got lots of industry leaders hiring chip design team leaders away from Qualcomm (who is squaring up for some really big layoffs right about now) and making lots of new home grown SoC moves with new chip designs using some new undisclosed ARM Holdings tech as the base.
Something is gonna give, soon.
Intel CISC simply has no compelling plan for the future. Microsoft is planning on swinging over into being a Linux based Value Added Reseller instead of a historical industry innovator as they have been in the past.
Both MS and Intel have now de-manned so very very deeply they can't really seem to do any real innovation any longer.===================================================
News Flash -- 4/19/2018 Qualcomm announces their first relatively large round of American layoffs and acts to refocus itself on its core businesses as Trump trade actions cause Qualcomm to lose the ZTE and Huawei business volumes. And no, Qualcomm isn't invulnerable to losing some big lawsuits or by having some of its largest overseas customers prevented from buying American technology for SEVEN YEARS by US government action.
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333198Qualcomm is joining Intel in the ranks of the declining American industrial giants now.
See Huawei and Xiaomi and ZTE grow rapidly & suddenly USING THEIR OWN ARM BASED HOME GROWN CHIP DESIGNS to cover this brand new opportunity. You got to remember that both ZTE, Xiaomi and Huawei are all controlled quietly by the Chinese Central Committee and they all are prone to getting Central Committee directives to sell stuff to each other upon need.
It is clear that Qualcomm was riddled with Chinese agents, witness how fast Huawei and Xiaomi was able to crank up a state of the art SoC based phone chip complete with a matching cellular radio system (< 1 year) and just how fast a 5g LTE system was able to be copied by the Chinese telecoms (can you say Huawei again three times fast?)
It is embarrassing how quickly China can go steal current American military secrets and industrial core technologies and
have them up and running before the Americans can even finish up their own original efforts.
Change, she comes again .....
We are approaching a world-wide tipping point for basic phone and computer technology that will see the USA drop flat off the competitive and developmental road map inside 3 years.